Without thinking, Beth automatically followed him. In the shelter it provided them with she could see Alex looking searchingly at her. Her heart started to beat far too fast.
‘Beth, I know it’s probably too soon to tell you this, but I think I’m falling in...’ He stopped and looked down into her eyes. ‘It’s crazy, I know, but I?
??ve fallen in love with you,’ he groaned.
‘No!’ Immediately Beth panicked. ‘No, that’s not possible,’ she denied. ‘I don’t want to hear this, Alex...’
Inside she felt as though she was being torn apart. Did he really think she was foolish enough, desperate enough, vulnerable enough to fall for his lies?
* * *
Beth was slightly more familiar with the city now, and she knew from the direction they were taking that they were walking back to the hotel. It was still raining—heavily—but even though she told herself that it would be a relief to be free of Alex there was still an uncomfortable heaviness around her heart.
The after-effects of her lunch and the distinctive and disturbing ache she was still suffering after this morning’s interrupted lovemaking, Beth assured herself stoically. That was all. There was no emotional base to what she was feeling. How could there be? She felt nothing emotional for Alex at all... If she had wanted him...needed him...been aroused by him, then that had simply been a sexual wanting, a sexual needing, a sexual arousal. There had been nothing emotional about it. Nothing... Men didn’t have the power to affect her emotionally any more. She didn’t like them...didn’t trust them... She was far better off on her own, using them in the way that they used her sex.
They had reached the hotel. Beth was just about to hurry towards the main entrance when Alex caught hold of her wrist.
‘No, this way,’ he instructed her, moving off in the direction of the car park and tugging her with him.
‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?’ Beth asked as Alex unlocked the door of his hire car, refusing to release her until he had carefully tucked her into the passenger seat.
‘Wait and see. It’s a surprise,’ he told her teasingly as he slid into the driver’s seat next to her and started the engine.
A surprise.
Beth looked suspiciously at him.
‘This isn’t just a ploy to get me to visit your cousins’ business, is it?’ she accused him. ‘Because if it is...’
She stopped as she saw that Alex was frowning at her.
‘No, it isn’t a ploy,’ he denied. ‘Although why...what is it that makes you so mistrustful of me, Beth? Is it this man, the one who hurt you?’
‘He didn’t hurt me,’ Beth denied. ‘I never loved him. I just... From the moment I arrived here you’ve done nothing but flatter me and flirt with me...’
‘And that makes me someone you can’t trust?’ Alex asked her quietly.
Something about the way he was looking at her made Beth feel slightly ashamed.
‘I don’t want to talk about it, Alex. Where are we going? I don’t...’
‘Wait and see,’ he repeated, and then added softly, ‘Tell me about yourself, Beth.’
‘There isn’t anything to tell,’ she protested shakily. ‘I’m not someone who’s either interesting or exciting.’
‘You are to me,’ Alex assured her with a soft emphasis that made the tiny hairs on her skin lift in sensual awareness.
Beth hadn’t intended to do what he asked, but somehow or other she discovered that she was, albeit a little reluctantly at first.
‘Your family sounds very much like my own,’ Alex interrupted her at one point. ‘My mother was always very conscious of the fact that she had no family of her own in England. The Czech people are very extended-family-conscious.’
They had left the city now, and were climbing through the hills—not that Beth could see much of them because of the heavy black clouds. The rain was causing rivulets of water to run down the surface of the road, carrying with them bits of debris. In the distance she could hear thunder which, although it didn’t exactly terrify her, was not something she enjoyed.
‘The weather is a lot more severe than was forecast,’ Alex commented frowningly at one point, when he had had to drop the car down to a low gear to drive through a deep pool of water which had collected in the dip in the road.
‘Perhaps we should turn back,’ Beth suggested uneasily. She still had no idea where they were going, but they were well into the hills now, and the villages they were driving through were small, little more than clusters of houses, many of them unoccupied. Alex had explained to her that most people owned houses in the villages but because they worked in the city were only able to use them for weekends and holidays.
They were climbing higher now, through a grey, mist-enshrouded landscape that made Beth shiver a little involuntarily. Where on earth was Alex taking her?